Bingo 13: Family
Wives Like Us is sort of like Jeeves written by Jane Austen featuring the Real Housewives of the Cotswolds with a touch of Sex and the City (the focal friend group parts of it at least). It’s about a bunch of married or recently un-married ladies approaching 40 and their people, some husbands and kids, caring a little too much about their Instagram. Relationships are the key, both the married family kind, and the found family kind.
On the one hand, this is Emma-style fluff (Tata is not the matchmaker she thinks she is). On the other hand, it’s so easy to hate everyone (ala Real Housewives) because they are so superficial. Tata Hawkins is the leader of the Country Princesses (not an official title exactly) which she can only manage with her Jeeves (the perfect problem solver/boss manager), who is actually a shoe-hound named Ian. Tata’s drama? Among other things, she’s moved to a cottage to get back at her husband in the main house for potentially cheating on her because of an unexplained jewelry receipt. Brian might now be keeping house with bikini designer Tallulah (who is the most obnoxious version of the entitled brat wife-wannabe). Fernanda’s son is getting bullied, and Sophie’s politician husband is toxic. Adding to the intrigue is the sudden arrival of the mysterious American heiress Selby (as in she inherited a biggest oldest house in the area), the single very good looking farmer/lawyer next door, the hot stable hand, the part time personal assistant who is more into pig farming, and a couple of dogs and erstwhile exes. And everywhere is named “<Something> Bottom”.
There are parties, dramatic tensions between friends, potential disasters (some real, some imagined, some just plain dumb) lurking everywhere, and misunderstandings and mysteries to solve. Some love found, some lost, some regained. Friends and family though are always at the core of what’s going on. If you focus on that, it’s actually not that bad.